The present invention relates to a veneer reeling unit for winding veneer sheets of various shapes and widths round the periphery of a rotated reeling roll by the aid of at least a strand of thread which is wound with the veneer sheets around the veneer sheets and wound therewith round said periphery of the rotated reeling roll to support and guide the veneer sheets.
In a veneer handling process of winding veneer sheets which are conveyed from a veneer lathe or clipper round the reeling roll in a conventional veneer reeling device, it has been a customary practice to wind initially by hand the leading end of an incoming veneer sheet onto the veneer reeling roll at the beginning of each reeling operation. With such prior art reeling device, the trailing end of a full veneer winding, or a winding of venner sheets which is formed when the reeling opertion has been completed, should be also secured to the veneer winding by use of any suitable means for preventing the outer free end of the winding from drooping by its own weight during transferring said winding to the subsequent unreeling station where the wound veneer is to be unreeled. However, this manner of reeling the veneer sheets, in particular those sheets which have a number of defects therein such as cracks, splits, decayed spots, etc. or those sheets which are of incontinuous form having irregular shapes and widths, calls for a number of workmen and large working area and space necessary for the abovesaid work steps. In addition, handling of veneer sheets by hand inevitably causes damages thereto, thereby inviting a decrease in veneer recovery, as well as in production efficiency.
As disclosed in the Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 52(1977)-10410 which is designed to improve the veneer winding process, it is known to use at least a strand of thread which is paid out from a spool as a means for guiding and supporting the veneer sheets around the periphery of a rotated reeling roll by being wound together with the veneer sheets. This arrangement has eliminated the fear of damages to the veneer sheets due to the centrifugal force created during the reeling operation and made it possible to reel the veneer sheets successfully into a neat winding, thus offering an advantage in that an incontinuous flow of veneer sheets having varying widths may be handled successfully. However, the problem associated with manually winding the leading ends of both the thread and veneer around the reeling roll and previously tying the thread's leading end to the reeling roll has remained unsolved. Moreover, the thread supplied from its spool should be cut off at a convenient position by any appropriate cutting means after the veneer winding of any desired storage has been formed, and thereafter the cut free end of the thread should be secured to the veneer winding so that the free end of the last veneer sheet in the winding may not droop by its own weight from the winding on the reeling roll. In the subsequent process of unwinding or unreeling of the veneer, therefore, the trailing ends of the thread and veneer must be located and then released from the winding. Furthermore, in order to permit the reuse of the thread re-collected after each unreeling operation, the cut end of the thread may have to be tied with an end of another thread to make a new strand of thread. However, repetition of such cutting and tying will make many knots in the thread, thereby affecting the smoothness in the reeling and unreeling operation, as well as deteriorating the thread quality. In this way, although the prior art according to the abovesaid Japanese Patent Provisional Publication which features the use of a reeling thread has contributed remarkably to the improvement of the veneer winding process, the problem associated with the thread handling is yet to be solved.